Wednesday, 26 November 2014

Up Up And Away!

Its probably been noticed already that aircraft plays a big role in Frozen Skies, chiefly as the main way of getting around Alyeska and quite possibly as a mobile base for the players.

Conventional aircraft have been mentioned and even featured in the Alyeskan Tales short stories, but there are other aircraft besides this. Gyro-copters have been mentioned, the Wolfbane Commandos are known to use troop carrying versions. There is another type of aircraft that plays a role in the world of Darmonica.

Skyships.

Theses levitations of the sky are derived from Ancient Terran technology that has managed to survive the eons, though they have only returned in the last century as the capacity to rebuild was once again to hand. It is generally known that a reprocessed gas called Liftorium is used to give the skyships their lift, though only the Skywrights Guild knows the full secrets behind them. Skyships are also prohibitively expensive and saw are generally only found in the hands of trade consortiums rather than small outfits due to the costs involved in running them. The various military forces operate aircraft carrier versions with more conventional blimps as escorts, though these rarely venture far outside of a nation's borders. The biggest user of skyships remains the Skywrights Guild, they alone have the resources to maintain a fleet and have the capacity to build more, however there are various small ventures attempting to break the Guild's monopoly despite efforts by the Guild to stop them.

Even though the Guild won't openly admit, they do have a rival in the form of the Iron Collective. After the collapse of the Holy Sodkan Empire many of the Guild's facilities within the Empire fell into the hands of the then newly formed Collective, but thus far the Collective has only been interested in building up its air fleet rather than try to corner the market. But the Guild isn't alone in keeping a wary eye on the Collective's ambitions in the skies...